Wrexham & Shropshire Railway hits the buffers

by Richard on January 27, 2011

This is very sad. The Wrexham Shropshire & Marylebone Railway has been running services from Wrexham directly into London since April 2008. The journey was quite unlike the alternative route operated by Virgin Trains: rather slower, but much friendlier. More old-fashioned, somehow. The rolling stock was comfortable and the staff always friendly. Unfortunately, I don’t have to go to London often enough for my travels to have made any difference to the company but I’m very sad about this. Like it or not, good links with London are an economic necessity. We keep being told that ‘the market’ needs competition, but from this part of the world one company will now have a complete hold over rail travel to the south-east of England. And environmentally, it’s a disaster. Fewer trains just mens more cars: more pollution, more congestion.

If I thought a theological argument would win the day, I’d be the first to suggest that Kim should make it. Unfortunately, the time for any kind of argument is past: the service is ending today. (The line isn’t closing though, so something might still be done in the future)

I’m not sure of the logic there. If you had one ten-car train rather than two five-car trains, the energy to move them would be roughly the same. Given that there is likely a fixed energy cost to running a train (caboose and other stuff like that that is one per train regardless of size), fewer but bigger trains should yield less pollution as a whole. Possibly more pollution per run, but less overall.

I take your point, Mark. But the Wrexham & Shropshire service is not being replaced by fewer but bigger. It’s being replaced by nothing. Nada. Zilch. This means that the opportunity to take the train to London is significantly reduced if you live in and around Wrexham. That has to be a Bad Thing.

My bad. If you replace train travel with car travel, you get more pollution and more parking headaches within London; if I recall, you have to pay a fee just to get into the inner part of London by car.